'Ommerikeby Tim Liardet


The snowstorm came down, it blew across Boston,
it said all roads behind you are closed for good;
when mass collides with mass and crawls lower,


when snow falls for forty-eight hours, you have to stop.
It blew. It billowed. Such weight of snow to stop
everything in its tracks. Stop, said the snowstorm,


set out, when I abate, from here. Stop, and watch
the whole of me blow in silence through the glass.
The tumbler knocked from the table by mistake,


it said, is yet to reach the foyer's marble floor.
The body of whomsoever is dumped headlong
will fall but never reach the bottom of the well...


My plane touched down on time, your train was held up
which meant it got in as my plane touched down.
Some fluke of clockwork meant my chronograph ran


as many seconds fast as yours was running slow.
We were booked into the same room by clerical error
under the same name, which was neither of our names.
 

From The World Before Snow by Tim Liardet, published by Carcanet Press this month. Available to orderhere with 10% discount and free UK P&P.


What began was begun at the dun, customary table
where all things must begin...

from 'Self-Portrait with Drag-Field and Dark

During a record-breaking blizzard in Boston, two poets met, one American and one English. This meeting marked the beginning of a life-transforming love affair. The story is told in The World Before Snow, Tim Liardet's tenth collection, a book of passionate extremes, in which he discovers new dimensions in language and form. The poems document some of the ways in which a particular species of love can allow for the rediscovery of identity, as all the fragments of persona previously put forth to the world are stripped away to expose a raw new self.

Click here to order The World Before Snow with 10% discount and free UK P&P from www.carcanet.co.uk.
Tim Liardet has published seven full collections of poetry. His third collection Competing with the Piano Tuner was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation and longlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize in 1998 and his fourth - To the God of Rain - a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Spring 2003. He has reviewed poetry for such journals as the Guardian, Poetry Review and PN Review and has been Poet-in-Residence at the Guardian. The Blood Chair, his fifth collection, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Summer 2006 and shortlisted for the 2006 T.S. Eliot Prize. He is Professor of Poetry at Bath Spa University.

Click here to order The World Before Snow by Tim Liardet with 10% discount and free UK P&P from www.carcanet.co.uk.

Carcanet is delighted to announce that we've been awarded the Alison Morrison Diversity Award! 'Carcanet gives voices to poets around the world that would not otherwise be heard' said the judges. '2014 was an outstanding year in which they published a list of books committed to reflecting a broad range of diversity and which proved to be both critically and commercially successful.'

Shortlisted for the first time at the IPG Awards after a year of both commercial and critical success, we achieved a best ever year of sales on the back of effective web and social media marketing, and saw our authors pick up poetry awards including the prestigious Forward and TS Eliot prizes. Our nomination for the Diversity Award recognised our consistent efforts to champion poets from a wide spectrum of multi-ethnic and culturally-diverse backgrounds including Kei Miller (winner of last year's Forward Prize), Lorna Goodison, Togara Muzanenhamo, Sujata Bhatt, Mimi Khalvati and many others. Carcanet was also one of three presses shortlisted for the IPG Inkubate Trade Publisher of the Year Award.

IPG Chief Executive Bridget Shine said, 'competition for places on the shortlists in our ninth year was stronger than ever, and we thank every IPG member who made it so by submitting entries. Our judges have produced a dozen superb shortlists and we salute all the companies and individuals on them.' We'd like to give an extra special thank you to Lady Gavron and Arts Council England for their continued support and without whom Carcanet would not exist.

Click here to read more about the awards on the IPG website and here in the Bookseller.
An Evening with Sujata Bhatt and Elaine Feinstein London Review Bookshop | 18 March 2015 | 7pm | �10


Elaine Feinstein and Sujata Bhatt will be launching their new collections at the London Review Bookshop.  Portraits (Carcanet), by Elaine Feinstein, is a book of remembrances, both real and imagined: fellow poets and writers, most vividly, reanimated, elegised and brought into the light. Sujata Bhatt's seventh collection of poetry,
Poppies in Translation
(Carcanet), also invokes remembrance, though of a different sort: the poems movingly examine how language can preserve, contain and comprehend the injuries of history.

Click here to book your tickets online from the London Review Bookshop website.

Kei Miller's 
The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
has been longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for 
Caribbean  literature. The winner will be announced on the 2nd May 2015 at the fifth annual NGC Bocas Lit Fest. 
Click here to order The Cartographer Tries to Map A Way to Zion by Kei Miller with 10% discount and free UK P&P from www.carcanet.co.uk.

 We had a lovely visit from the New Zealand poet John  Dennison  at Carcanet towers  today!  He's completing the final week of his UK tour to launch his new collection Otherwise . You can join us in Manchester and Cambridge for the final leg of his tour.  Take a look at the full details below: 

Wednesday 11th March | Manchester Cathedral
Priest and poet Rachel Mann will read with John Dennison from 7pm in the Jesus Chapel of Manchester Cathedral. Free and all welcome. No booking necessary.

Thursday 12th March | Magdalene College | Cambridge 
Join us for an evening of poetry with Rowan Williams & John Dennison from 5pm at the Benson Hall
 
Magdalene College, Cambridge. The event is free and all are welcome. No booking necessary.

Click on the links to order tickets or here to Otherwise by John Dennison with 10% discount and free UK P & P from www.carcanet.co.uk.

Here's one more photo of Katie and I proudly clutching Carcanet's Alison Morrison Diversity Award at the IPG awards ceremony 2015!



 

Click here to visit our website and find out more about our diverse and  international list of poetry titles.